Friday, February 27, 2009

This giant freshwater stingray was caught as a part of a National Geographic expedition in Thailand this week. It weighed in at a whopping 550 to 990 lbs and was as wide as a full grown man is tall. For the record, that would be one huge, painful barb to be stung by. The expedition was searching for "Megafishes" as a part of a documentary on Earth's 20 largest freshwater fish.

The gargantuan ray is one of the 200 species of rays and is currently listed as vulnerable by the IUCN red list. Little is known about their ecology since fishing decimated their populations. The National Geographic expedition hopes to learn more about this rare and enormous beast.

Personally, I hope the special comes out soon! It'll be one I'll be sure not to miss!

550-990 pounds represents a rather large uncertainty! Is that a typo or did the stingray really give them a hard time while they were weighing it?I thought you'd hit entrecard's front page soon! Happy blogging.

Other Fun Reads

Brighter Planet

Help Stop World Hunger

Why Do I Blog?

I started this blog mostly because of my friend Allie. She's on her way to a masters in Journalism, and she got assigned to write a blog for one of her classes. When she told me about it, I thought"wow, good idea."

You see, I love to write, but as a scientist very little of my day-to-day writing is interesting or legible to anyone who isn't a scientist. So this lets me write in a way that is actually fun to read - I know, novel.

Anyhow, if you want to why it's called "Observations of a Nerd," read this.